Jason Raish Illustration Blog

Karasu Kimono
Friday, November 20, 2009

Time to start thinking about a "Japan Project" now that i'm in Japan. I have decided on a Crow theme since they are everywhere in Tokyo. This is a quick 3 hr experiment i did last night. I went to the biggest art store in tokyo the other day and got this tube of lilac paint and was really feelin' the color so I couldn't resist and put everything off and finally painted like i have been saying i would. I am trying to do some work totally analog, no computer, all traditional mediums. If you didn't know i have done all of my work with pencil on paper, acrylic paint texture backgrounds and then photoshop color. I did this with no photoshop yay! it feels so good to paint again. except this isn't fully painting, its kind of cheating, i'm letting the black ink lines do a lot of the talking for me instead of meticulous hrs of exact painting. I am messing around with the chinese ink still. I will comment on what i was thinking and the concept behind this and more crow themed pieces once i get my concept fully cemented. Acrylic, chinese ink, brush pens, colored pencil on paper.

Posted byJason Raish at 12:30 PM 2 comments

Bernie Fuchs
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Bernie Fuchs was the guy that I saw slides of in illustration school and didn't like because all i saw were sports illustrations for sports illustrated. I stumbled across these illos on Leif Peng's Flickr account and have now been slapped silly by his work. For tons more inspiration check out Leif's flickr account and her today's inspiration site to get your daily illustration education. He specializes in 40's and 50's illustration. He died in september. He painted a few presidents including JFK. What a guy. If all you know is his sports illos try to find his other stuff!

such an amazing spread, such an amazing shape made

reminds me of robert mcguinnis a little.

awesome yellow graphic shape

always been a fan of fadeaways.

and blue, my favorite color

subtle texture sets this apart from the computer crap that i turn out. oh it makes me want get paint out.

Posted byJason Raish at 12:21 PM 0 comments

Another work pile
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

These characters are for various literature for Choonhae University (춘해보건대학 로고), a special trades college in Pusan, South Korea. My friends Mom is the dean of the school so i got to do this job! features are an optometrist, radiologist, yoga instructor, EMS rescue worker, dental assistant, and nurse. Most of the students are female so it was stressed that the girls need to be cute.

for UTNE magazine about volunteer groups that go to Malawi, Africa. the article is poking fun at these groups and asking if the volunteer groups are doing any good. Malawi is where madonna adopted a baby from and where other celebs have jumped on the wagon. There are also resorts there. sad to see an impoverished african nation and then bam! resorts and fat american highschool kids having pool parties after their "volunteer" work.

full page for strategic finance magazine about some boring and hard to grasp topic. i think it was something to do with cash flow. this is different from my usually style because i felt i couldn't capture the feeling i wanted with the jelly fish using pencil cuz pencil is dark and the jelly fish i wanted are luminescent. dont know which version they went with

monthly column about golf rules for golf magazine. this time it asks about getting a penalty for not playing a hole because the sprinklers were on. I forgot what the ruling was. I'm pretty happy with this one and think i captured the guy like i wanted to this time. I guess in the back of my brain i have the disney character Goofy in mind, i remember some old cartoon of goofy playing golf when i was a child.

for Texas Monthly. yay i finally got to work for them. this is a humorous article about being a human lab rat and offering up your body as a test subject for cash.

Posted byJason Raish at 6:28 AM 0 comments

Magical Camp in Sapporo, Japan
Sunday, October 18, 2009

My friend Akari asked me to submit some art for the Magical Camp postcard project where the sales would go towards planting trees. Magical camp was at the end of august and is actually an overnight music festival in Sapporo, Japan. Sapporo is on Hokkaido island, the huge nothern island of japan. Wish i could have been there!

not my art.

my tanuki character

my chinese wish tree head girl

my light bulb deer

my Michael Jackson

Posted byJason Raish at 12:51 PM 1 comments

Tons of New Work
Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Here is a Ton of work done during the summer that I can post now cuz it's published.

for the Radio Times in London. its a spot for a program airing about footballers (soccer players for us Yanks) and how they make so much money and what they do with it. the title is "The Men with the Golden Feet". i liked this version better than the gold coins cuz it pops more, thankfully the art director did too.

Characters designs for a pitch for Chef Boyardee done for SuperFad, a motion graphics agency in New York. the client wanted a version of Chef Boyardee before he became the old guy on the can logo. they wanted him to be martial arts trained and cool. I found it challenging to do this cuz i had to keep the hat and mustache action. Anyway I put special edition Chef Boyardee Mustache Dunks on him!

this one has an extremely high collar all the way up to his mustache

i put samurai armor shin guards on all the guys.

samurai mask wearing urban vigilante version

more samurai armor.

spinach sandwich villan

for IBM systems magazine about some new software called EGL. the title was the EGL has landed. The art director and I thought the falconer/eagler's glove with the eagle landing on it signifying the user harnessing the awesome power of this new EGL software but the editors wanted it changed to a branch :(

for Pheonix Magazine. The art director was cool. I am into cryptozoological crap so this was cool to do. its about the Mogollon monster which is the bigfoot of Arizona. also about the Pheonix lights UFO sighting and haunted mines. had fun using chinese ink and paint for the background

spot for JazzTimes magazine about choosing a career in Jazz instead of something academic. I was hoping they would go with the flying concept but went with this safer one

for scholastic scope magazine, they adapted the Edgar Allen Poe story "William Wilson" into a play for kids. basically william wilson's "twin" follows him around through the years ratting him out and causing problems for him until he kills him in a sword fight and learns that he was his concience.

tons more to post later after it publishes!

Posted byJason Raish at 11:16 AM 0 comments

New Work Dump
Wednesday, September 02, 2009

I have done a ton of work in the last 2 months so here is more of it that i can show now.

spot illo for St. Louis Magazine about people who have graduated from LOGOS high school in St. Louis and their hesitation to mention it because it is a school for at risk youth.

a spot illo for Career World Published by Reader's digest. Its about No Frills colleges. Basically they take out all the extras like sports, lounges, and activities to provide a lower cost college education. Type went across the left side of the illustration.

for Slate.com it was a week long series about how the USA could come to an end. This was the lead image for "The End of the USA"

for Slate.com it was a week long series about how the USA could come to an end. This option is Totalitarian take over.

for Slate.com it was a week long series about how the USA could come to an end. This option is how the Mormons could rise to power after the USA goes down

for Slate.com it was a week long series about how the USA could come to an end. This option is about global warming and environmental disaster

a spot illo for Rides magazine for the Talkin' Crash column. Rapper Sticky Fingaz of Onyx fame talks about how he is a maniac behind the wheel.

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Posted byJason Raish at 2:45 PM 1 comments

Movie Inspiration - Johnnie To's "Sparrow"
Monday, August 03, 2009

Time for another installation of Movie Inspiration, movies that inspire me as an artist. I was finally able to get a hold of a proper copy of "Sparrow" by Johnnie To, a Hong Kong director famous for his "Triad Election" hong kong gangster movies. This movie is not in the vein of his other movies and took him 3 years to make, this is the movie that he wanted to make, and whenever there is a directors dream project on hand you should pay attention. This movie is beautiful and equally as amazing is the soundtrack! It really added a 4th dimension to the movie. it was eerily beautiful and out of place. mixing jazz and old school chinese instruments and sound. There were several scenes where the marraige of music and visuals was so awesome that i was grinning from ear to ear. This shows that Johnnie To is an artist, I saw people complaining that this movie was about style over substance but when it's this beautiful who cares (if you're an artist)? It's about pickpockets in Hong Kong. I read somewhere that this movie is Johnnie To's love letter to Hong Kong because he loves his city and it shows. That's about right.

a lot of noir-ishness going on, lots of slow motion, and lots of well lit, well composed money shots! The music during this scene topped it all off and is my fav scene.